Terrifying analysis came out recently from the Centre for Social Justice on persistent school absentees.
It thinks that around 9,000 children left behind academically as a result of the pandemic and missing school could end up as criminals. I'm just wondering how this works logically. Because children who tend to be school refusers tend to refuse school because of disabilities, such as mental health distress or neurodiverse conditions, and who find the structures of schools, designed for neurotypical kids without mental or emotional distress, absolutely unbearable.
And rather than seeing Fagin-style pickpocket and county lines drug dealing home schooling set ups, I'm seeing, yet again, frightened and despairing kids staying at home in their bedrooms, playing computer games and doing quite a lot of crying. Surely the real focus should be WHY are these kids not going to school? Not tarring them with an imaginary brush from the future and insisting they're all doomed to the clink.
There are certain aspects of society who still do not see the light when it comes to school refusing. They are so desperate to push children back into a system which is broken and actively breaks those children, that they make up projections like this. Yes, they could end up as criminals. Or perhaps they could end up as entrepreneurs. Pushed out of systems which don't work for them, maybe they're able to set up whole new ones for the next generation. Just like James Dyson and Richard Branson. Dyslexia, a neurodiverse condition, makes great out of the box thinkers. Who make great innovators and entrepreneurs.
